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. 2022 Jul 28:13:938900.
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.938900. eCollection 2022.

The effect of environment on intestinal microbial diversity of Panthera animals may exceed genetic relationship

Lei Chen  1 , Di Xu  1 , Mengyao Sun  1 , Ying Li  2 , Shen Wang  1 , Ying Gao  2 , Zenghao Gao  1 , Yuying Shi  1
Affiliations

The effect of environment on intestinal microbial diversity of Panthera animals may exceed genetic relationship

Lei Chen et al. Front Microbiol. .

Abstract

Intestinal microbes are important symbiotes in the gastrointestinal tract of mammals, which are affected by food, environment, climate, genetics, and other factors. The gut microbiota of felines has been partially studied, but a comprehensive comparison of the gut microbiota of Panthera species was less reported. In this study, we compared the gut microbial composition and diversity of five species of Panthera (Panthera tigris, Panthera leo, Panthera onca, Panthera pardus, and Panthera uncia) by 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) amplicon sequencing. The results showed that Firmicutes was the most abundant phylum among all the Panthera species, followed by Actinobacteria, Fusobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, Gemmatimonadetes, and Euryarchaeota. There were significant differences in observed species of fecal microbiota among different Panthera animals (P < 0.05), indicating that there is species specificity among Panthera fecal microbiota. When the samples were further grouped according to sampling locations, the comparison of the alpha diversity index between groups and beta diversity analysis showed that there were significant differences in the fecal microflora of animals from different sampling locations. Cluster analysis showed that fecal microbes of animals from the same sampling location were clustered, while gut microbes of animals of the same species, but from different sampling locations, were separated. These results indicate that environment may have more influence on mammals' fecal microbial diversity than genetic relationships.

Keywords: Panthera animals; diversity analysis; genetic relationship; gut microbiota; sampling environment.

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Conflict of interest statement

LC was employed by the Qufu Normal University. DX, MS, SW, ZG, and YS are studying at Qufu Normal University. YL and YG were employed by Jinan Wildlife Park.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
NMDS analysis of fecal microbiota among species groups (A) and sampling location groups (B).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
The UPGMA clustering analysis of fecal microbiota based on unweighted UniFrac distance.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
LDA value distribution histogram shows the representative biomarkers in different species groups (A) and different sampling location groups (B).
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Relative functional abundances of fecal microbes annotated at the KEGG level 2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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